Study Examines STD Rates of Teen Virgins

Tuesday, March 9, 2004
(2:23 PM ET)
By Jason Straziuso

Associated Press Writer

``The point is, substantively, that if you knew someone who pledged, and you knew someone who didn't pledge, you had no basis for thinking that one of them would have an STD over the other.'' The study also found that in communities where at least 20 percent of adolescents pledged the STD rates for everyone combined was 8.9 percent. In communities with less than 7 percent pledgers, the STD rate was 5.5 percent. ``It is the combination of hidden sex and unsafe sex that creates a world where people underestimate the risk of STDs.''

PHILADELPHIA -- AP
Teens who pledge to remain virgins until marriage have the same rates of sexually transmitted diseases as those who don't pledge abstinence, according to a study that examined the sex lives of 12,000 adolescents.

Those who make a public pledge to abstain until marriage delay sex, have fewer sex partners and get married earlier, according to the data, gathered from adolescents ages 12 to 18 who were questioned again six years later. But the two groups' STD rates were statistically similar.

The problem, the study found, is that those virginity ``pledgers'' are much less likely to use condoms.

``It's difficult to simultaneously prepare for sex and say you're not going to have sex,'' said Peter Bearman, the chair of Columbia University's Department of Sociology, who co-authored the study with Hannah Bruckner of Yale.

``The message is really simple: 'Just say no' may work in the short term but doesn't work in the long term.''

(More: Netscape Network News w/CNN)

2004 © The Associated Press.

Dan